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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30115881">a vicious, vengeful sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/babytriumphant/pseuds/babytriumphant'>babytriumphant</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>welcome to chicago, where you are from [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Blaseball (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Assimilation, Gen, Lake Michigan, Mentioned medical terminology/procedures, Seasons 1-2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 01:08:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,214</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30115881</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/babytriumphant/pseuds/babytriumphant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He grows up halfway between worlds: his mother a paramedic, his father one of the deep-lake creatures that inhabits the shells of the ships left rotted-sunken in the cold. (A 12x100 about Wesley Poole and the nature of integration.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Wesley Poole &amp; Isaac Johnson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>welcome to chicago, where you are from [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935640</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>We Are Fanwork Creators</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>a vicious, vengeful sea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Of Monsters and Men's Black Water. </p>
<p>This interpretation is loosely based off of Wesley Poole's IRM entry 303.2 (the one where he's a fish boy). The events of this fic occur before the Season 5 reverb, when Wesley was shuffled to the Firefighters' pitching rotation. Also, I would like to note here that his pregame ritual is "Swearing an oath". This is somewhat relevant. </p>
<p>Big thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetset">Pine</a> and <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novelsinourheads/pseuds/Novelsinourheads">Stara</a> for making sure this was coherent!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>1 - He grows up halfway between worlds: his mother a paramedic, his father one of the deep-lake creatures that inhabits the shells of the ships left rotted-sunken in the cold.</p>
<p>His mother dances with him, her soft hands holding his clawed webbed ones; they listen to Queen, so he knows the tempo of CPR. His father teaches him to swim, and to love someone out loud instead of breaking their ribs during chest compressions to save them. Speech, instead of saviorhood.</p>
<p>Wesley looks at the ice covering Lake Michigan every winter and thinks: it's the same thing. One begets the other.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>2 - He struggles at school. Usually it's his teeth: not suited for the sounds his throat produces; not blunt enough. He is terrifying, alien. Someone slips a photo of an anglerfish into his locker and it makes him cry: surely he looks more like the person who left the photo than that ocean-trench beast. </p>
<p>He wants to find them, tell them: the course of evolution never runs smooth. You fit a biological niche, as does that anglerfish. I fit neither, so I make do.</p>
<p>But he can't make the words go. Every time he tries, his teeth get in the way.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>3 - Wesley meets Isaac at an athletics showcase: his mom says swim team is a good way to socialize; Isaac is among the best cross country runners at school. </p>
<p>“What’s in the thermos?” Isaac asks. </p>
<p>Wesley shows him: lake water, a gift from his father, so he doesn’t forget. Isaac nods like he understands and pulls a Post-It from his wallet. Wesley recognizes, distantly, the writing on it: Chinese. </p>
<p>“The name my grandmother gave me,” Isaac says. “So I don’t forget.” </p>
<p>Not the same. But close enough for them to understand each other; enough for the weight of it to translate.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>4 - These are things he knows: myocardial infarction. Distressed swimmer. Hypoxia. Reaching assist. Vector-borne transmission. </p>
<p>These are also things he knows: how water churns at the surface, and then goes still and quiet with depth. The sound of ice breaking, sliding from Chicago shores when spring comes, heard underwater: thunderous-creak echoes, giving way to pale light. The slime-softness of deep-lake silt against fingertips, and the tickling pondweeds, and how carp move in the distance, vast, encroaching. How fish go still when stunned. </p>
<p>He teaches himself spearfishing, and the dichotomy of protection: to find something beautiful, but also seek to change it. </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>5 - The glow of the fire turns the surface of the lake red and orange. Ash lands on the water, scummy and thin. </p>
<p>Chicago speaks to him in the language of silt and EKG readings and the shells of cargo freighters lost in the frigid, aphonic fathoms. <em> Hello, Wesley Poole, </em> Chicago says, <em> child of my waters, defender of my city from the aquatic invaders, Cyprinus carpio colossus. I am burning.  </em></p>
<p>Wesley stares at her visage, twisted rebar and concrete heart aflame, and says nothing. </p>
<p><em> You are also a child of my shores, </em> she says. <em> Would you protect me here too?  </em></p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>6 - He carries the thermos at his hip: a reassuring weight in the blaze that pulls his fragile skin tight and hot over the bones in his face, around the gills between his ribs. </p>
<p>After they all wash clean, soot swirling in the drain of the communal shower, Wesley curls up in one of the bay windows, far from everyone else. The stained-glass depicts a simple scene: a woman pours buckets of water over a fire on the beach; a pair of piscine eyes watch from the waterline.</p>
<p>Wesley dips a finger into the thermos, just to see.</p>
<p>It’s still cold.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>7 - Tyreek, tired-eyed Tyreek, red-star saints-haloed Tyreek, teaches them what it means to fight fires. How to save as much as possible. </p>
<p>Wesley quietly disagrees. Protection cannot be static; needs of ecosystems change, and conservation is unsustainable long-term. People should be saved, but defending the city’s girder-concrete bones should be more like cleaning fish after hunting: scrape off silver scales, remove unwanted cartilage. Let go of the unsalvageable. </p>
<p>He wonders if the never letting go is what makes people like his mother brittle. Wonders if that’s why she never seemed guilty, every time she broke ribs trying to save a life. </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>8 - But how do you decide what to cling onto white-knuckled, and what to let float away?</p>
<p>Isaac is the one who buys them ice cream in February. Isaac is Chicago-streets born-and-bred, ox-sturdy, cold-impermeable. Wesley does not feel cold so much as the urge to go sleep, but sugar is a good shock to the system.</p>
<p>“What d’you think about blaseball?” </p>
<p>The ruins of the old stadium still smolder. </p>
<p>“Nervous,” Wesley says. He holds his cone out in front of him, like he’s stepping up to the plate: imagines it’s a bat, and startles when the wafer cracks under his grip.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>9 - He plays. </p>
<p>It hurts, every time he hits the ball: sends a seismic shock up his fingers into his shoulder, knocking all his foundations loose. Batting is a study in reversal, undoing poor fortune, practicing a thousand tiny repetitions in search of that beautiful, blinding moment of clarity. </p>
<p>Tyreek is very good at it. Wesley, who always knew what he was meant to do—protect—finds it tedious, uninspiring. </p>
<p>“You’ll get it in time,” Tyreek says. Hands, broad and callused from work that tore instead of wore, press a scuffed-up baseball into Wesley’s webbed fingers, the motion gentle. “I know you will.” </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>10 - The first season rolls out like a wave pulling away from shore: with the knowledge that it will slam in again, just as violent, just as inevitable. </p>
<p>Wesley cares not for forbidden books or pitchers from Seattle: they are not his domain; they have no place in the small, cold places where Wesley loves what he loves. On the Gods’ Day he waves goodbye to Tyreek and goes to the shore, to return to the quiet waters. </p>
<p>Isaac comes down the beach, barefoot and shivering. “Are you going to come back next season?” </p>
<p>Wesley says, “Do I have a choice?” </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>11 - Wesley hauls carp onto shore, cuts filets to deliver to the soup kitchen Isaac recommends, and allows shorebirds to feast on the bones. He listens to the song of the lake, and the keening cries of his father’s people, calling him deeper: asking him to descend to the lightless places, to return home. </p>
<p>But Wesley’s mother taught him to dance to Queen and to breathe air into the lungs of the dying. Wesley made a promise to defend and protect the dry asphalt and steel-glass towers. </p>
<p>His home is here: one foot in the water, one foot in the sand. </p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>12 - Wesley is nowhere close, when Tyreek throws themself in front of Justice and burns. </p>
<p>Wesley kneels with the city; cries salt tears with her and her people; mourns. But, when he finally has enough space to walk up to Tyreek’s memorial in the stained glass and leave offerings, all he can think of is: <em> You were wrong</em>. </p>
<p>Nobody has to love all their adaptations. Sometimes it’s less about bending to fit and more about carving out a space in the dirt. </p>
<p>“I’m sorry you’ll never see me pitch,” Wesley says, and around his teeth, the words come out crystal clear. </p>
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